About separating security duties

Symantec ESM lets you separate the duties of system administrators and security officers to ensure effective computer security.

When an individual or a system administrator has both the network and the security administration tasks, the following common problems occur:

One person may not have the time to do both the network and the security administration
It may be difficult to perform the necessary checks and balances if all the tasks are assigned to one person.

If you assign network administration and security administration tasks to different individuals, you can ensure the following:

Each task is performed appropriately.
Well defined tasks that are assigned to each role helps in performance enhancement.

System administrators and the security officers perform complementary tasks.

Table: Separation of administrative and security tasks illustrates the separation of administrative and security tasks.

Table: Separation of administrative and security tasks

System administrator	Security officer
Performs the day-to-day network operations	Determines the security standards and policy for day-to-day operations
Installs and maintains computer systems	Monitors the compliance of computer systems to security policy
Configures the computers to conform to company security policy	Makes the recommendations and monitors overall conformity to security standards of computers